Four Roses
by Davner
Summary: Toraichi Tamiya has never been good with women, but a Love Avenger gives him a chance to change all that.
1. Chapter 1

_So here's the deal: I started this story and One More Story a few years ago, and I'm not sure which one to finish or if they're worth finishing at all, so let me know what you think._

_Davner_

Disclaimer: AMG isn't mine. The events of this story follow those that occur in _Timidity_ and _Resolve_, although they are incidental to the main plot.

**Ah! My Goddess!**

**Four Roses**

**Chapter 1**

**I Pity Da Fool...**

"CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"

Toraichi Tamiya took in the encouraging cheers of the men and women around him as he shotgunned the beer and smashed the empty husk against his forehead with a howl of enraged victory.

The crowd cheered, and Tamiya leapt down off the table in the center of the Morisatos' kitchen.

Standing near the wall, Keiichi Morisato sighed and wondered again why... oh, why... he left Belldandy alone with Tamiya and Otaki and gave them the opportunity they needed to ask her to host the Auto Club's post-race victory party.

"Speech! Speech!" the Auto Club members called.

Tamiya held a hand up like a Roman emperor at the Colosseum. "Our club has won a great victory today!" he announced. The club members cheered. "And now all we have to do is win the inter-collegiate championship race in To..."

He broke off as a familiar brunette entered the room.

The crowd waited for him to finish.

"... Um... uh..."

"He's wasted!" someone called.

"Hit the reset button!"

The crowd laughed.

Otaki stood up next to him. "LET'S DRINK MORE OF MORISATO'S BEER!"

"HUZZAH!" the crowd responded.

The crowd started for the kitchen, leaving the two Auto Club managers alone.

"Hey, Den chan," Otaki asked, prodding him in the chest. "You okay, man?"

"Yeah," Tamiya said, watching Peorth speaking with Belldandy.

Otaki followed his gaze and grinned. "Nice, man. Nice! You gonna pick her up?"

"Um," Tamiya muttered. "Yeah."

"Okay, man! She's all yours!" Otaki told him, giving him a push. "Go get her!"

The hulk lumbered toward the diminutive French woman, who was still engrossed in conversation with the other foreign girl. He stopped next to them and... just... kind of stared at them.

Belldandy smiled at him. "Ah! Tamiya san! Are you enjoying the party?"

Tamiya stared, his intense eyes boring into both of them.

"Toraichi?" Peorth asked, bemused. "Are you all right?"

"Are there any more chips?" he asked.

"Hai!" Belldandy replied, handing him a bag of ruffled potato chips.

Tamiya took the chips and continued to stare for another moment.

"Thank you," he rumbled before turning and starting toward the door.

Otaki watched his friend walking for the front door. "Oh, man... shot down," he commented sympathetically. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "You blockhead!"

888

Tamiya left the sounds of the party behind as he let his feet lead him over the temple grounds, his thoughts aswirl with self-recriminations and self-pity.

He had never been good with women. The only woman he had ever loved was Chihiro, and that had ended badly, not only losing her but nearly losing his best friend and hetero-life-mate. After that, he had concentrated on his life's work, making engines run, cars go, and people pay for the privilege.

It wasn't until he first saw Peorth that day in Morisato's hallway that old desires came upon him again, the feeling that came with having a beautiful woman look at him with love in her eyes.

But he hadn't been able to make it work. It turned out that Peorth had a thing for Morisato and had been using him to make the other driver jealous. That hurt. The thing was, he didn't think Peorth meant anything malicious by it, and she was decidedly single. But every time he thought about trying to say something to her... he fell apart. Last time it was easy, she came onto him, but now...

If women were engines, Tamiya would be the greatest love machine in the world. But women weren't like engines, they were like women. And that sucked. Because he knew engines. He didn't know women. Women were mysterious... like non-metric tools... He knew what they were in theory, but had no idea how to handle one.

If only he could learn how to relate to a woman like Peorth. If only there was a way for him to connect with her...

He grunted as his foot struck something hard and snapped him from his reverie. The temple's wishing well stood before him like a roadblock.

Tamiya looked from side to side and grunted again.

_It's worth a shot..._

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-yen coin. Checking around once again to make sure no one was watching him, he tossed the coin in and clapped twice.

"I wish I knew how to relate to women."

The coin bounced off the sides of the well a couple of times before hitting the water at the bottom with a "plunk."

Tamiya stood there, waiting. For some reason he couldn't explain, he just assumed someone would answer his wish right away...

But that was just crazy talk.

888

The sun was just starting to go down outside the hotel window, bathing the goddess standing on the other side of the bed with a golden light that seemed to bring out a glow in her pale skin. From his perspective, the view was beautiful, and he wasn't even facing the window.

He watched her unpack her suitcase and tried not to look like he was staring... which he was... which she already knew...

"Now, I know you're new to this kind of thing," he told her supportively. "But don't worry. Vacations are easy. Just... put yourself completely in my hands."

"I see," the goddess told him simply as she moved clothes from her suitcase into the dresser drawer. "And when you say, 'completely in my hands,' you are, of course, speaking metaphorically."

The god held up a finger. "In point of fact, no," he said with a grin. "But that's tonight after some dancing, a little dinner, a walk on the beach..."

_Oooh! You touch my tra-la-la!_

_Ooh! My ding-ding dong!_

The god snatched the Blackberry off his belt and unlocked it. His goddess companion eyed him suspiciously.

"I thought you said you were on vacation?" Lind, formerly commander of the 1st Combat Division, asked him with a slightly accusatory tone.

"Oh, yeah, I am," Anteros told her, reading through the email. "Totally. It's just a... you know... thing..."

Lind crossed her arms over her chest. "Aphrodite doesn't know you're here, does she?" she asked. "She thinks you're at the office."

"What?! No!" Anteros replied, adjusting his heart-checkered tie with one hand while holding the Blackberry in the other. "Okay, let me amend that, yes."

"I see..."

"But it's fine!" Anteros told her dismissively. "Aphrodite's usually drunk before she even shows up at the office. All I had to do was put a clothes hanger on the doorknob and turn the sound up on a National Geographic special on the TV in my office, and she thinks I'm in there with..."

He saw fire come to the former Valkyrie's eyes and quickly adjusted his statement.

"...YOU!" he finished with a grin. "She thinks I'm in there with _you_! Of course... _you_." He chuckled nervously and cleared his throat. "I just need to check this." He went back to the email.

Lind continued to unpack, looking up as the god made a solemn declaration.

"The Love Avenger has been called forth!" he announced.

She sighed.

Anteros holstered the Blackberry as he continued. "A young man in Japan has made a wish of the heart, and Aphrodite, in all her greatness and benevolence, has seen fit to grant him his heart's most aching desire." He squared his jaw like a superhero and looked off into the middle-distance.

"So you have to go," Lind summed up.

He chuckled. "My dear," he began, propping a foot up on the bed and putting his hands on his hips in a self-important pose. "I am a love god, God first class, commercial license, PHD in Loveology, general harass-titioner. When the call comes down... when a man needs help navigating the intricate rivers and valleys of the heart... it's not up to me to simply say no..." He nodded to her and bit his lip. "I don't step aside, my dear. I step _up._"

"You're supposed to be on vacation," Lind pointed out dryly. "How long will this take?"

"The heart is a tricky thing," he told her, still in pose-and-speech mode as she unpacked. "A complicated bit of the cosmos, the divination of which can't be rushed. It may take days... weeks... months! _Years_!"

Lind held up a piece of diaphanous fabric that looked small enough to fit in a birthday card envelope. "I'll be wearing this."

Anteros stumbled and fell to one knee with a gasp. He held up a hand. "No more than fifteen minutes!" he gasped out. "I swear to God!"

With that, he disappeared in a puff of Hai Karate. Lind smiled and continued to unpack.

888

Tamiya fished a beer out of the clubhouse fridge and twisted the top off before collapsing in an old Lay-Z-Boy recliner and helping himself to a heap of self-pity.

"Women," he grunted. "Who needs 'em?"

He didn't. That was for sure. Women were trouble he didn't need.

There was a "PUFF!" from the direction of the bathroom, and the burning scent of Usher filled his nostril. He turned his head, figuring a bottle of cologne had fallen from the bathroom shelf and shattered. What he didn't expect to see was a sandy-haired man in a grey suit walk out of his bathroom, dusting himself off.

"Okay," the man said to the stunned goliath. "First off... Usher? Really?" he asked amazed. "Second, are you Toraichi Tamiya?"

Tamiya, dumbfounded by this new development, merely nodded.

The man checked his Blackberry. "And did you deposit five yen into a wishing well at the Tarikhongen Temple?"

Tamiya nodded.

"And did you make a statement wherein you wished to be able to..." He checked the screen on his phone. "... 'relate to women?'"

"Are you from the government?" Tamiya asked in trepidation. "Was I supposed to pay taxes on that or something?"

The man put the phone away and straightened his tie. He cleared his throat. "Testing... One two, one two... Testing..." Clearing his throat again, he turned to Tamiya. "Toraichi Tamiya, _I_... am Anteros... God First Class, Commercial License, Unlimited... Sent here by the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite of Cypress, to grant you your wish!" He posed theatrically. "As long as it takes less than fifteen minutes!"

The giant blinked at him.

Anteros cleared his throat. "Right! Let's get started!" He checked his watch. "We have fourteen minutes left!" He clapped his hands together and rubbed them as he took a seat on a nearby workbench. "What's the problem?"

"Oh," Tamiya said, still in shock at his current circumstances. This had to be a gag of some kind, and yet he couldn't figure out how it possibly could be. Unless someone had been spying on him at Morisato's place, stood close enough to hear his wish, it was impossible. Still...

"I'm gonna need to see some ID," he rumbled.

"Like a driver's license?" Anteros asked skeptically.

"Or some kinda proof that you're a god," Tamiya replied. "Like... clap your hands and make dancing girls appear or something."

"Hmmm," Anteros said, pulling out his Blackberry. He typed for a bit on it and looked up again. "You and your friend Otaki bought Fujimi Chihiro engagement rings..."

"Everyone knows that by now," Tamiya growled out.

"Yeah, but you also put a down payment on a house," Anteros added. Tamiya's eyes went wide. He hadn't told anyone about that, not even Otaki.

He swallowed and nodded slowly. "Okay," he said, ready to believe him. "There's dis girl, see? And I wanna talk to her... But I don't know what kind of things to say or do? I mean, if she were inta engines and stuff, I'd be set, ya know? But there's only one girl I know who's like that and... well... she ain't in da picture no more."

Anteros waited, prompting Tamiya to continue nervously.

"I don't know nuth'n about women," he complained. "When I do date, the girls change their numbers right after."

The god checked his watch and stood up. "I think I know how to solve your problem," he declared.

"Ya do?"

"Yes, I do!" Anteros announced dramatically. "What you need is training! To learn the ways of feminine mystique! To become a ninjitsu love warrior!"

Tamiya jumped to his feet. "Now yer talk'n!" he said. "So what do I do first?!"

Anteros was tapping on his Blackberry again at this point. "I'm glad you asked, my freakishly gigantic friend!" he replied. "To learn the kung fu of getting it on, one must walk the path of the flower petals!"

"Is dat on some mountain top in Tibet or something?"

The god put the Blackberry away and walked to the front door, expecting the package he ordered to have arrived already. Opening the door, he reached out and grabbed hold of a hand cart holding three tall objects covered by a black tarp. He wheeled the cart inside and whipped the tarp off.

Three tall rose plants, each in their own decorative clay pot, stood before them.

Tamiya stared at them for a moment before turning to Anteros. "So I gotta eat these or someth'n?"

"No," Anteros replied, removing the roses from the cart and placing them next to the counter. "You're going to raise them."

"Uhhhh..."

Anteros checked his watch again, getting decidedly nervous. "Look, trust me, the knowledge on how to interact with the fairer sex lie within taking care of these roses." He grabbed the giant by the front of his shirt and pointed at his eyes. "Tamiya!" He pointed at his own eyes. "Tamiya! Right here!" He pointed at the boy's eyes again. "Right here! Listen to me! These roses will turn you into a sexual tyrannosaurus! I guarantee it!"

He released the walking mountain of muscle and straightened his tie. "Trust me."

"But... flowers?" Tamiya asked. "It's kinda girly..."

"What a coincidence!" Anteros told him. "You want to sleep _with girls_!"

"Yeah, but..." Tamiya tried again, looking from side to side. "I mean... roses? What do I tell the guys?"

Anteros checked his watch again, becoming somewhat agitated. "Tamiya, you didn't make a wish asking to know how to relate to guys. You want to know how to relate to women. This will teach you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a beautiful ex-valkyrie virgin war goddess waiting for me in a Hawaiian hotel room to 'lei' me." He grinned and held his fist up. "Huh?! Huh?! Nice! Go ahead. You can bump it."

Tamiya slowly held his fist out and bumped it against Anteros's. "Yeah... that's... um... That's a good one."

"Right?" Anteros asked. "So," he cleared his throat and started for the bathroom. "Remember what I said: take care of the roses and learn from them. Let them show you the way of the flower petal."

Anteros snapped his fingers and disappeared in a puff of cologne.

Tamiya took a breath and sighed.

888

The sound of the roses and their pots hitting the bottom of the steel dumpster was a very final-sounding "boom," and Tamiya barely gave them another thought as he clapped the soil off his hands and started for his dorm.

He knew what Anteros said, but he was a dude, and dudes didn't do flowers. Period. Yeah, sure, there was that one guy in Sailor Moon, but he was a toolbox, so what did that tell you about flowers?

The hulk entered the dormitory and climbed the stairs to his room, noting the light coming from under Otaki's door as he passed by. The punk mechanic was still awake, probably watching some race being beamed in by satellite from Talladega. As he stepped into his room, he took his shirt off and sat down on the floor with a sigh.

He wanted a girlfriend. He should have just wished for that. That would have been easier. Maybe Anteros could have given him a pre-packaged perfect girl for him, one that was both hot but modest, was girly but could work on cars with him, could cook well and liked to do it...

Fucking Keiichi. How did _he_ always get all the good babes?

"So why didn't you ask for one?"

The voice should have made him jump in surprise, but he was too tired to be shocked. He knew it had to be some kind of hallucination. He turned his head and found Peorth lying on the futon next to him. She arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to say something.

He shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I mean... I guess it wouldn't have worked. I _had_ the perfect girl, and she left."

"And why did she leave?" Peorth asked, rolling onto her back and stretching, arching her back so that Tamiya could get a good look at her breasts.

"Um..." he rumbled, thrown for a second. "Because I didn't know how to say noth'n that mattered, I think," he told her. "I mean... when we's was fixing a bike, we were like this." He held his hand up, his index and middle fingers pressed tightly together. "But once the bike was fixed it was like she was some kinda alien thing from some movie."

Peorth kicked off her shoes and undid the buttons on the front of her blouse. "So you want the Rosetta Stone, non?" she asked. "A way to translate?"

"I just want to know what to do with a woman, okay?" he blurted. "Dat Anteros guy said I can learn by taking care of some flowers like some sissy boy! Phht! What's that gonna teach me?"

The imaginary goddess ran her fingers up and down the front of her chest in thought. "Perhaps nothing," she allowed. "Then again," she went on, "I know _I_ wouldn't want to be just tossed aside because a man didn't want to put in a little effort."

He flinched.

She grinned and sat up, wrapping her arms around him. "So, as long as you're half-asleep and dreamy, you wanna play for a bit?" She snapped her fingers, and suddenly Urd and Belldandy, dressed in bikinis, walked out of his tiny closet. "I brought friends..."

Suddenly, his front door burst open, and Otaki came running in.

"Dude! You gotta see this! There was a twenty-car wreck at..."

Tamiya stared daggers at him. The imaginary goddesses were gone.

"What?" Otaki asked.

888

Tamiya opened the heavy plastic flap of the dumpster and reached inside, pulling the three rose plants out one by one. Noting the amount of garbage clinging to them, he took them one at a time by the stalk and shook them violently, shaking the six-pack rings and assorted other trash off of them.

He didn't have a lot of time before class, so he settled for quickly bringing them into the clubhouse and shoving them into a corner. The boy turned to go and stopped suddenly, wincing in self-reproach. Plants like water.

The hulking man went to the sink and found an empty beer bottle. Filling it with water he dumped the water into the three pots and started for the door.

There. Done.

This wasn't so hard.

888

It was Tamiya's short day for classes. All he had was weightlifting, softball and particle physics. After that, the day was his, giving him time to think on his predicament. Anteros said he could learn something from taking care of the roses, and that was all well and good, but aside from knowing that plants needed sunlight and water, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Did that mean take Peorth outside and douse her with the hose?

While she ran to him...

In a bikini top...

Bouncing up and down...

He cleared his head... but filed it away for future use.

The giant was lumbering aimlessly as he thought on these things, and he was halfway across the quad when he saw someone who might be able to help him.

Sayoko Mishima, a bouquet of flowers in her arms, was strolling in his direction. Of course she would know. Dudes gave her flowers all the time.

He stepped into her path and held a beefy palm up. "'Scuse me," he said gruffly.

Sayoko stopped and blinked before smiling arrogantly. "I'm sorry, my arms are full. If you have a gift for me it'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"Uh... no," he replied. "I was go'in ta ask whatch're gonna do with dem flowers."

"Oh, these?" she asked, hefting the bouquet. She shrugged. "I'll put them in some water in a crystal vase until the next bouquet arrives, then toss them in the trash. Why?"

"So... you don't like... take care of dem or nothi'n?"

"No," she said, looking at him as if he were an idiot. "They don't have roots."

"Oh," he said.

She sighed, obviously bored with the conversation and the senior. "Look, if you want to learn how to garden, get a how-to book or something." She started past him. "I'm a little busy right now."

"Hmmm," he thought. "A book, huh?" Looking up, he saw the library on the far side of the quad. Taking a breath, he started for it.

He didn't spend a lot of time in the library. Most of the stuff he needed for school projects was found online, so he didn't really know his way around the expansive building. Deciding he didn't want to waste time wandering around, he walked up to the front desk where a short, bespectacled goth chick was checking in books behind the counter.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a bored-sounding voice. The ring in her lip didn't do much to bring out her black lipstick, but it did match her jet-black hair.

"Yeah," Tamiya rumbled. "I need a book."

"So you came to the library," the goth summed up. "The devil, you say."

"Yeah," he answered. "I need a book 'bout roses."

"Roses?" the girl asked with an arched eyebrow. She gave him a look up and down. "You know you can't smoke those, right?"

His eyes narrowed, and he offered her a gruff growl of displeasure.

"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "Over here, Gigantor." She led him to the hobby section and checked over the shelves. Reaching up, she pulled down a book called "Mr. T Raises Roses."

She handed it to him. "There. Anything else? You want rolling papers or something to go with it? Maybe a forty-ounce of Mad Dog?"

"You're not a very nice person," he noted dryly.

She shrugged.

Once again, he wished he knew how to talk to chicks. He wondered if maybe it was something he did and decided to try to put a happy face on things. He curled his lips up into a smile... something that looked a lot like a doberman snarling at her.

She took a few steps back and turned, walking away as fast as she could.

He checked the book out and started for the clubhouse, figuring there was enough time to do what he needed with the roses before people started arriving for the club meeting.

Pushing the door open, he stepped inside and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Popping the top, he cracked open the book and turned to the first page.

_Step 1: Roses need water, fool! About an inch! And don't be watering them from the top! You put that water in the soil!_

Tamiya looked up at the rose plants and put the book down. Checking their pots, he already found the soil dry.

"Hmmm." He looked around and found an old tupperware pitcher. Filling it in the sink, he poured water into the roses' pots until an inch of water was in each one. He stepped back as water began to leak out of the holes in the bottom of the pots.

"Oh... uh," he remarked as the water started for the drain in the center of the concrete floor. "So... do I rub their noses in it now or what?"

He walked back to the book, figuring this would be the next lesson. He was disappointed.

_Step 2: Roses need light, fool! Can't get no photosynthesis go'in in the dark! Put them flowers in the sun! At least eight hours!_

Tamiya groaned. He couldn't put them outside. People would see. He picked up the pots and brought them near the window instead. Reaching out, he turned one so that the leaves were toward the light.

_Step 3: Roses are social, bitch! You need to talk to them and shit!_ _I pity the fool who doesn't talk to his flowers! Talk to them like you talk to the ladies! They like that shit!_

He closed the book and looked at the flowers for a moment. No... he wasn't going to be doing that.

So what did he learn today? Apparently, you give girls too much to drink and they pee on your floor. They also don't like the dark. And you're supposed to talk to them.

He looked up as the phone suddenly started to ring. Assuming it was some club member calling to say he couldn't make it, he snatched the phone up off its cradle.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Tamiya!" the man on the other end shouted. Tamiya held the phone away from his head as ear-shattering club music erupted from his phone.

"Uh... yeah?"

"It's Anteros!" the god shouted back. "Remember? From last night!?"

"Uh... yeah?" Tamiya said again.

888

In the corner booth of the club, not far from the fog covering the dance floor illuminated by strobe lights, Anteros pressed the phone to his ear as he simultaneously locked his gaze onto the goddess on the dance floor.

"So, how's it going?" he shouted over the music.

"Uh... I kinda have some questions..." Tamiya replied.

Anteros didn't hear one word. His attention was on the retired valkyrie dancing nearby, her eyes closed as she moved to the music. Lind had decided early on in their vacation that she liked dancing, the act feeling very similar to the katas she used to perform... only with no edged weapons.

"That's great!" Anteros told him. "Just great!"

"I'm really having a hard time understan..."

"I'm really... really..."

Lind raised her arms over head and turned away from him, moving her hips in time with the deep bass and drums from the music booming overhead.

"... What was I saying?" Anteros cried into the phone after a moment.

"It says I should talk to da roses," Tamiya went on.

"Yes!" Anteros replied, finally paying attention. "Yeah, talking is important!"

"What do I say?"

"'Hello?'" Anteros suggested. He looked up as Lind started toward him, an intent look in her eyes. "Hey, buddy, I have to g..." He broke off as Lind grabbed the front of his suit and pulled him off his seat and toward the dance floor.

888

Tamiya growled as he hung up the phone. Turning back to the roses, he cleared his throat.

"Um... hello," he said, feeling embarrassed at the act. "Um... My name is Toraichi Tamiya. What's yours?"

Of course the roses didn't reply, but even if they could they didn't have names.

The senior thought on that for a moment. It kind of made sense. After all, he was going to be feeding them and taking care of them, almost like pets, and he had named bikes in the past. He rubbed his sculpted jaw in thought before pointing at them each in turn.

"You are... Mercedes," he announced to the first rose. He pointed to the second. "And you's is Lexus..." His finger moved to the last one. "And you I'm gonna call... um... Caprice Classic!"

There. For some reason, he felt a little more comfortable. "So... um... Like I said, I'm Toraichi, and I'm gonna be tak'n care of you and stuff. I've never had flowers before, so if I screw up or something, don't die or noth'n, okay?"

"Oi! Den chan!"

Tamiya turned as Otaki walked through the front door and stepped toward him. The blond man looked down at the roses and furrowed his eyebrows behind his sunglasses.

"Den chan!" he cried. "What are you doing, man?!"

"Er..." Tamiya stuttered. "I'm um..."

"You can't grow _pot_ in here!" Otaki cried. "You know what'll happen if the dean catches us with that stuff?!"

Tamiya paused. "You're right, I should be more careful," the hulking man told him.

Otaki nodded. "That stuff's bad news, man. So... um..." He looked from side to side. "You think I can get a dime bag?"

"Um... No?" Tamiya replied. He growled. "Look... Dai chan... Dese ain't Mary Jane, okay? They're roses."

Otaki blinked behind his specs. "Roses?"

"Roses," Tamiya confirmed.

"Oh man..." Otaki sighed.

"Oh, come on," Tamiya said. "It ain't that bad..."

"Morisato's keeping his froo-froo stuff here now?" Otaki grumbled. "Man, I swear. Guy bathes every day, raises flowers and lives with four chicks he ain't bon'n. That guy is definitely... you know..."

"They're mine, Dai chan," Tamiya told him. "It's an experiment."

"An experiment in what?" Otaki asked.

"Um... social sciences," the incredible hulk answered. It was close enough to the truth.

"Yeah, but..."

"Is there a _problem_ with my experiment?" Tamiya asked, narrowing his eyes.

Otaki paused. "Um... no?"

"Dat's good," Tamiya told him. "Dat's real good."

"It's just... you know..."

"Just what?" Tamiya asked, flexing his muscles so that the bicep in his right arm grew to the size of his friend's head.

Otaki thought about it... real hard...

"...you know..." he went on. "...manly," he finished. "Totally manly."

"Bet your ass."

888

Tamiya entered the clubhouse nearly a week after his conversation with Otaki and immediately opened the shade, bathing the flowers in light.

"Good morning, ladies," he said casually as he went to the sink and filled their water pitcher. "Did you have a good night?"

While the roses didn't respond, Tamiya did arch an eyebrow at the sight that met him when he went to water them.

"Well... look at dat," he said. "You're blossom'n."

True enough, the three roses had blossomed beautifully after barely a week. Tamiya guessed he must be doing something right.

It had taken him awhile to really warm up to the idea of having flowers, and so far only Otaki knew he had them. He still found the whole thing a little less than manly, but he was finding that he kind of liked taking care of them. The boy still had no idea what he was supposed to be learning from them, though.

He'd even gotten more comfortable talking to them, a part of him relishing the fact that he could tell them literally anything without worrying about them spreading it around or thinking less of him. He talked about his car projects, the club... and Peorth.

"Let's take you girls outside today," he said, picking up Mercedes and taking her out the front door. He found a sunny spot near the front of the clubhouse and put her down before returning inside to fetch the other two. Once they were sitting in a line just beneath the front window, he watered them, worrying for a moment about the fact that they were in plain sight, and the rest of the club was coming over to work on their tripod racer.

He shrugged. Who cares? Besides, they were pretty, and a part of him wanted to show them off. It seemed a shame that they might blossom and no one would see them.

Once they were settled, he walked to the side of the clubhouse and grabbed the front of the trailer on which the racer sat. Taking hold of the thick, heavy chains in his hands he grunted as he pulled the entire thing to the front of the clubhouse where they could work on it. His muscles strained with the effort, but in the end it wasn't difficult for the behemoth of a man.

With the trailer in position, he dropped the chains and stretched his arms. As he lowered his arms, he saw the first members of the Auto Club come over the hill and down the sidewalk toward him.

"All right!" he bellowed to them. "Let's get ta work!"

888

Their jack was broken, and the club didn't have the money to buy a replacement. Luckily for them, however, they didn't need one. Tamiya grabbed the front bumper and pulled the front of the car off the ground while Takehiro crawled under it and unscrewed the oil plug, draining the oil out of the racer.

"This'll take a minute," Takehiro told him.

"Whatever," Tamiya replied, thoroughly nonplussed by the statement. A few minutes later, the stream of oil slacked off, and Takehiro pulled the pan out from under the car.

"Okay," he announced.

Tamiya dropped the car, which bounced on its shocks. He would have to pick it up again in a minute so they could work on the transaxle, but for the moment he could rest.

Takehiro took the pan of oil and rushed toward the barrels on the side of the clubhouse where he could safely deposit it. As he was about to round the corner, he tripped on a rock sticking out of the ground and dropped the pan, which bounced against the ground and splashed oil up and onto one of the roses.

The boy stood up and dusted himself off. He picked up the pan and shrugged.

"Oops," he commented as he turned.

It took him a minute to figure out what was covering his face and halting his movement. It smelled like sweat and oil and seemed to be firmly attached to his head at five points. Finally hre realized someone had grabbed him by the face with a massive muscular hand.

"You screw'n with my roses?" he heard Tamiya asked.

"Huh?" Takehiro asked, weirded out by the situation. "Um... Hey, it's cool, Senpai. It's just a little oil."

"Cool, huh?" Tamiya asked. "Would it be cool if I went ta your mom's house and splashed some oil on 'er?"

"Er... I'll go with 'no,'" Takehiro replied.

Tamiya lifted him by the face and moved the boy aside before releasing him. The rest of the club watched fascinated as Tamiya went to the rose and started examining it.

"Oi, Den chan," Otaki called to him. "Do that later, man! We're on a schedule here!"

Tamiya ignored him, examining the rose, Caprice Classic, and finding that while her petals didn't have oil on them, her stalk and the soil in her pot had been splashed with used oil.

"Den chan! What the hell, man!?"

The giant reached over and grabbed Takehiro by the front of the shirt. With a quick movement, he ripped the AC/DC shirt from the boy's chest and started wiping the oil from Caprice's stalk. Once that was accomplished, he tossed the shirt back to the boy and started digging the oily soil from the rose's pot.

Otaki looked to the other members of the club with a "Check out this guy!" look on his face.

They all watched in almost horrified fascination as Tamiya stood up again, but instead of returning to work, he walked into the clubhouse and returned a moment later with a bag of potting soil.

"Dude, forget the flowers!" Otaki cried.

At first, they thought Tamiya was grumbling angrily about them. It took them a moment to figure out that he wasn't addressing them or even himself.

"Don't listen to them," he murmured to the rose. "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it."

"Senpai," Hasegawa whispered to Otaki. "I'm scared."

Otaki didn't know what to say. His best friend and hetero-life-mate was turning into a flower-potting froo-froo girly-man!

Finally finished, Tamiya stood up and went back to the car. He saw the rest of the club members staring at him.

"Whatchu look'n at?" he demanded.

"Senpai," Hasegawa began quietly. "Are you... um... okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said.

"Are your little flowers okay?" another club member asked with a laugh.

Tamiya's eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't hear you very well from way over there. Could you come over here and repeat that face-to-face?"

Silence.

"Anyone?" Tamiya asked again. "I really do wantta discuss this with you's further... right here... face to face... you know..." He curled his hand into a fist, his knuckles cracking loudly at the movement.

No takers.

"Okay, 'den," the senior remarked.

No one else brought up the subject for the remainder of the day, the whole club working in awkward silence until it was time to go home. Very few people dawdled, most grabbed their stuff and took off. In no rush himself, Tamiya lingered, putting tools away and making sure the racer was covered sufficiently with a tarp to keep out both prying eyes and the elements.

He turned to bring the roses inside and found Hasegawa still hanging around.

"Hey, Senpai," she said with a nervous wave. "You need some help with those?"

Fully aware of how weird he must have seemed to the club and knowing that turning down help would only make him seem weirder, he nodded. Kneeling down, he picked up Mercedes and Lexus with one hand apiece, leaving Caprice for Hasegawa to heft.

"So when did you start a garden?" Hasegawa asked, trying to make casual conversation.

"A week ago," he replied quickly. "It's an experiment in social sciences," he explained.

"Ooooh," the girl remarked, the pieces seeming to fall into place. "What's the hypothesis?"

Tamiya cleared his throat nervously, unsure of what to say. "Um... That... er... um..." He grasped onto something and ran with it. "That plants respond better when ya treat 'em like chicks."

Hasegawa was silent for several moments, and Tamiya was sure he had lost her. The young coed probably thought he was a freak of nature or something.

"You know," Hasegawa began as she put Caprice down in the corner. "That actually makes sense."

"It does?" he asked quizzically.

"Well, yeah," she said. "Plants like being talked to, and they like being pretty... so... I guess if you treat them like girls, they probably respond better. That's a pretty neat project, Senpai!"

"Um... yeah... thanks," he said. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

He turned the lights out and shut the door behind them, leaving the roses alone in the dark clubhouse, only a few moths left behind to buzz around the single naked bulb left on in the club's small kitchen.

A pair of arms stretched skyward as the glamorous-looking redhead yawned. Sitting on one of the two mismatched bar stools, she crossed her legs under the long green skirt she wore and sighed as she looked out the window.

"It was so nice out today," she commented.

She turned as she heard the sound of a body hitting the futon and bouncing twice on old, rusted springs. Her long red hair spilled out over the edge of the bed, creating a crimson river down to the dirty floor.

"Totally," the other woman agreed. She turned her head to the small kitchen table where a third redhead was scribbling on a notebook, pausing only to adjust her horn-rimmed glasses. "Are you okay, Caprice?" she asked. "That gunk looked icky!"

"Oh, don't pity her!" the first woman cried, hands on her hips. "Did you see how Toraichi sama fawned over her after that ruffian spilled that stuff on her?"

The second woman sighed longingly. "Boy, did I..." She grinned over at the first woman. "And did you see him lift that car?! Oooooooooo-WHEEE! What! A! MAN!"

Caprice rolled her eyes and adjusted her glasses again. "Really, Lexus, is that all you can think about?"

"Hey! I asked if you were okay!" Lexus replied, sitting up and crossing her legs. "You're the one who won't share!"

"She's got you there, Caprice," the first redhead chimed in. "Come on. Tell her about it, or she's never going to leave you alone."

Lexus held her hands over her heart and closed her eyes. "Describe it... in lurid detail!" she begged in a sigh.

Caprice growled. "Fine. He took a ratty t-shirt and..."

"No! No! No!" Lexus interrupted. "Describe like in a romance novel!"

"I'm not going to describe it like that," Caprice told her with a tone of finality as she went back to her work.

"Puuuuuh-leeeeeeeaaaaaassssseeee?" Lexus begged.

"Fine," Caprice said, removing her glasses. "As I lay there, covered head-to-toe in the foul oil, Toraichi sama gently took a soft, silken handkerchief and slowly dabbed at my soft skin..."

"OOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!" Lexus squealed, her eyes closed.

The first redhead, Mercedes, rolled her eyes. "Try to control yourself, Lexus," she said, walking to the refrigerator to search for a bottle of wine. Finding none, she sighed in disappointment. "After all, it wasn't even you..."

"I know!" the younger woman huffed. "If he had put ME closer to the light instead of you, Caprice, it'd be ME getting pawed at with those strong, gentle hands..."

Caprice replied by rolling her eyes again.

"Did you see when he took off his shirt and poured water over himself?!" Mercedes asked, unable to control herself any longer.

"No," Lexus replied sarcastically. "I missed it! What do you think!?"

"I think you're both forgetting something important," Caprice told them. "He's a human, and we're roses..."

"So?!" the other two flowers shot back.

"A princess married a frog!" Lexus argued.

"Beauty married a beast," Mercedes confessed.

"And Toraichi sama wants a goddess," Caprice told them firmly.

"Peorth!" Lexus hissed, her hands balling into fists.

"I bet she's fat," Mercedes bit out.

"And whorey," Lexus added bitterly.

"Probably a lesbian," Mercedes added.

"And whorey," Lexus reiterated. She picked up a pillow, sat it in her lap and made stabbing motions into it.

"You're going to have to accept it," Caprice counseled them. "He's in love with someone else."

"Well, sure, YOU don't care!" Lexus said, standing up and marching over to the middle rose. "You don't even love him!"

Caprice stood up and slapped her sister rose across the face. "I will rub your petals in fertilizer!"

"Girls, girls, girls," Mercedes said, pushing her way between them. "We can't fight amongst ourselves. We're not the enemy... Peorth is."

"Peorth!" all three flowers hissed simultaneously.

"Fat... whorey... lesbian..." Lexus bit out.

"So, we are agreed," Mercedes said regally. "We will not fight amongst ourselves, but instead find away to win our darling Toraichi away from the clutches of that vile Peorth person..."

"Whorey... fat... lesbian..."

"Caprice," Mercedes began, ignoring her youngest sister. "Surely there is _something_ that can be done?"

"We can lock her in the trunk of one of Toraichi sama's cars and drive her into a lake!" Lexus suggested.

"No," Mercedes told her.

"Awww... We never do what I wanna do..."

Caprice rolled her eyes. "That's because it's always the same thing with you!" Caprice told her. "You're always suggesting murdering people! Why can't you suggest we just go out and get ice cream or something?"

"Caprice?" Mercedes gently prodded, getting things back on track.

"Perhaps... there is something..." the middle rose began. "I'll work on it."

"Wonderful!" Mercedes replied with a clap of her hands. "Then it's settled!"

"Toraichi will be ours."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: AMG isn't mine. The events of this story follow those that occur in Timidity and Resolve, although they are incidental to the main plot.

**Four Roses**

**Chapter 2**

**It's hard to pity a fool if you get too close**

"This should only take a few minutes," Keiichi assured the two goddesses walking beside him as he approached the Auto Club's garage. "If I order the part through the Auto Club, it'll cost about half as much."

"It's no problem, Keiichi," Peorth replied. "We have all night." Belldandy nodded her agreement. The sun was starting to go down over Nekomi Tech, and the three had decided to catch a movie. Urd had declined to come because the movie they were going to see was some kind of teenage, vampire romance movie. Urd had pointed out that she had already dated a soulless bloodsucker and didn't need to see the movie version. Skuld had opted to pass because she had seen it six times already.

But first they needed to make a quick stop...

Keiichi pushed the clubhouse door open and heard Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" blasting through the garage and way too high a volume. A quick search found Tamiya working on an engine block on the far side of the garage.

"Oi! Senpai!" he called with a wave.

Tamiya reached out and hit stop on the CD player. "Morisato," he rumbled. "You're just in time to help..."

"Actually," Keiichi began, chucking a thumb at the two goddesses behind him, "we're on our way to the movies. I just need to use the club's computer."

At the sight of Peorth, Tamiya froze like a cute cuddly 280-pound behemoth caught in the headlights of an approaching truck.

"Oh," he said. "Uh... yeah, that's cool."

"Thanks," the younger student said. "Should just take a minute." He took off toward the club's back office, leaving Tamiya alone with Belldandy and Peorth.

An awkward silence filled the garage. Belldandy decided to try to break it first.

"So, Tamiya san, how are you?"

"Umgood," he muttered.

_Now what?_ he asked himself. His gaze fell on Peorth, who was absent-mindedly looking at the random tools lining the garage walls. _I've been training for this, right? That was the whole point of the whole flowers thing, right? So what do I do?_

_"Roses need water, fool!" _the first lesson from Mr. T Raises Roses came screaming into his mind.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked them.

The offer seemed to startle the two women. Belldandy clapped her hands happily. "Thank you very much!" she replied. "Do you have any tea?"

"I've got light beer," Tamiya replied. "It's pretty much the same thing as tea."

"That would be wonderful," Belldandy told him, undaunted.

"Just water for me, please," Peorth told him.

"Okay, this way," he said, leading them to the club's tiny kitchen. He turned on the lights and knelt down by the refrigerator. He had just grabbed a long-neck and a bottle of water when he heard Peorth call out behind him.

"Oh! These are beautiful!"

_Crap! The roses!_ he thought. _Now she's gonna think I'm some froo froo boy like Morisato!_

He arrested this thought as a voice in his head that sounded very much like Anteros said _"You mean the Morisato that gets to tap Belldandy every night? He doesn't seem to be doing so bad..."_

He stood up quickly and turned to find Peorth bending over to get a better look at Mercedes. Watching her, he popped the top off the beer with his thumb and handed it to Belldandy, who inspected it optimistically.

_"Roses are social, bitch! You gotta talk to them 'n shit!"_

"Uhhhhhm..." he began.

Peorth looked up at him and smiled. "Are they yours?"

_How do I talk?! What do I say?! _

_"Duh, dude," _his head replied. "_If you're supposed to talk to roses like chicks, then you talk to chicks like roses..."_

"Yeah," he finally said. "They're mine. That's Mercedes," he told her, pointing at the rose Peorth was examining. "And that's Lexus and Caprice Classic."

"They are lovely!" she exclaimed. "I would not have thought you the gardening type," she told him.

He opened his mouth to repeat the "social experiment" story, but stopped. He was supposed to talk to Peorth like he talked to the roses, right? He didn't lie to the roses...

"They're teaching me stuff," he said.

"Teaching you?"

"Yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his head nervously. "Like... how to communicate better with... um... people."

"You talk to them?" Peorth asked with obvious respect.

"Yeah," he said sheepishly. "Every day. I guess that makes me a froo froo guy like Morisato, but..."

"Au contraire, Toraichi," Peorth interrupted. "It shows you care!"

"Hey," Keiichi said, coming into the kitchen, "I'm all d..." He stopped as Belldandy put her finger to her lips and nodded her head toward the exit. "Oh," he said. "O...kay..."

Tamiya was only half aware of Keiichi and Belldandy stepping out of the kitchen without them. "Well," he said, "You know, I'm trying to do it right... I ain't never raised roses before..."

"Would you like some help?" she asked. She casually let her left hand fall to Caprice's blossom. "I actually know a little about roses."

"You do?" he asked dumbfounded. He hadn't known that about Peorth. Holy crap, Anteros might actually have been onto something!

"Oui," she said, kneeling down and examining Caprice. "You could say I'm something of an expOUCH!" she finished with a cry. Looking at her hand, she saw a spot of blood on the end of her finger. "She bit me!"

Just like that Tamiya saw his momentum with the goddess grinding to a halt. He grabbed a paper towel off the counter and took her hand. "Here," he said. "You can use this." He pressed the napkin against her finger.

It wasn't until he heard her quietly clear her throat that he realized he was, in fact, holding her hand. "Oh... um... sorry. I..."

"No, please, merci," she said, eyeing him. "I was just surprised. No rose has ever pricked me before."

"So... um... Roses," he began again.

"Oui," she said.

"You know... maybe we can talk about them... like... together... with a beer or something..."

"I don't know about that," she said, removing the napkin to check her wound. "But dinner might be nice."

"How about tomorrow?" he asked. He gestured at his oil-soaked clothing. "I'm not really dressed for public..."

"That sounds wonderful," she said. "Tomorrow then. Say... eight o'clock at Seoul Cafe?"

"Yeah!" he replied. "Hell yeah! I mean... sure."

She smiled. "Then it's a date," she said. "Unfortunately, I have to go now or we'll be late for the movie." She turned to go. "Au revoir, Toraichi."

"Yeah," he said. "Oreo-vor to you too."

He watched her walk out and let out the breath he'd been holding. He did it. He talked to Peorth. He got a _date_ with Peorth!

"I did it," he said out loud. He turned to the roses. "I did it! I'm going out with Peorth!"

The roses said nothing. He blinked. He half-expected them to say something and was almost surprised when they didn't. And yet, at the same time, he got a disapproving vibe from the room all of sudden.

"Um... well, girls, I gotta get back to work on that engine." He filled the water pitcher and gave them some water before heading back into the garage. Billy Idol came howling back into the room as he got to work.

Mercedes sashayed across the room, her nose high in the air. "Oh, Monsieur!" she breathed, imitating Peorth's accent, "I'm an _expert_ on roses!"

Lexus walked past her, getting into the game herself. "Look at me! I speak _French!_ ... 'Burritos!'"

"The worst part is she's not even fat!" Mercedes cried. "And I don't think she's a lesbian either!"

"On the bright side," Lexus told her reassuringly, "the jury's still out on whorey."

"THAT DOESN'T HELP, LEXUS!" Mercedes cried.

"Oh," the youngest rose replied dejectedly. "But hey! At least Caprice cut her!"

"Yes, well done, Caprice!" Mercedes agreed. "Did you see her face?"

"Bitch couldn't believe it," Lexus remarked. "She was like, 'Oh no you din't,' and Caprice was like, 'Oh, yes I did!"

Caprice wasn't listening. She was carefully wiping the droplet of Peorth's blood onto one of her fallen leaves. "Please, don't mistake my actions for that of some love-addled twit trying to strike out in the name of frustrated jealousy," she said. "Although," she went on, "It was good for that too."

"Then why did you do it?" Mercedes asked.

"Because," Caprice said, examining the blood-stained leaf, "I need the blood of a god in order to finish the potion."

"To poison Peorth!?" Lexus cried hopefully.

"No," Caprice answered. "God, what is wrong with you?"

Lexus hung her head.

Mercedes hugged her. "Nothing that a lifetime with dear Toraichi can't fix, right, Lexus?"

"Or some electro-shock therapy," Caprice threw in.

Mercedes shot her a venomous look. "Getting back to the topic at hand," she said, "What kind of potion are you making?"

"Well, the biggest impediment to reaching the heights of physical and emotional bliss with Toraichi is the fact that we're roses. This potion will allow our astral forms to enter the physical plane."

Lexus sniffled and looked up hopefully. "You mean... we'll be able to touch Toraichi like women?"

"Oh, I'm going to do a lot more than just touch him," Caprice said.

"Well, make the potion already!" Mercedes told her.

"It's not that simple," Caprice said. "There's only enough blood here to make one dose, that means only one of us can go."

"Dibs!" Lexus called, throwing her hand in the air. "I call dibs!"

"You can't just call dibs," Mercedes said, moving closer to Caprice. "Only Caprice can make the potion, so that means she has to choose." She rested her hands on Caprice's shoulders. "After all, she's the smartest and most beautiful of us, and only she has the wisdom to pick which of us will..."

"I'm going first," Caprice told her.

"You selfish whore!" Mercedes snapped.

"Don't worry," Caprice assured them. "I have a plan."

"Oh, I'm sure you do!" Mercedes threw back. "It involves Lexus and I sitting here all night while you ride dear Toraichi like a circus elephant!"

Caprice's eyes narrowed. "I'm not going to abandon you. We wait until Toraichi leaves for his date, and then we call Peorth pretending to be him and tell her to meet him here. Then, when she arrives, we hit her in the back of the head with a snow shovel, take some more blood and bring you two into the physical plane."

"Dibs on the shovel," Lexus threw in.

Caprice sighed. "You truly are a simple creature," she said. "I'll hit her with the shovel because I'll be in the physical plane. You just sit there and wait."

"And then what?" Mercedes asked.

"We go to the Seoul Cafe and help Toraichi pick up the pieces of his broken heart left shattered after Peorth stood him up," Caprice said.

"And what do we do with Peorth?" Lexus asked.

Caprice held up the leaf again. "Whatever we have to."

888

Peorth silently shook her head at the immature prattle coming from the movie screen. Mortals and their idea of love made her wonder sometimes why the Almighty bothered bestowing such a gift to them. It was like giving a physics book to a five-year-old. Oh, they could look at the pictures and even think they're pretty, but had no idea of the true potential that lay within.

She looked to her right and found Belldandy totally engrossed in it. On just the other side of the Norn, Keiichi looked uncomfortable, fidgeting with his left arm as if unsure what he was supposed to do with it. Shaking her head again, she put her finger on Belldandy's hand.

_This movie isn't very good, _she sent. _I should go and give you and Keiichi a chance to make out._

Peorth saw Belldandy blink and heard the other goddess in her mind a moment later.

_Make out? But what about the movie?_

She rolled her eyes. _ Making out is why men bother coming to these movies. I'll go, it'll be less awkward and he can _finally_ put his arm around you the way he's been working himself up to for the last forty-five minutes._

_Are you going to hurt Tamiya san again?_

The question surprised Peorth so much, she broke the connection. She reconnected a moment later. _What makes you think that?_

_Please don't misunderstand me,_ Belldandy sent back, simultaneously taking a sip of her soda with her other hand. _Tamiya san is our friend. I didn't like seeing him hurt last time. He appears solid and strong, but under all that muscle lies a vulnerability. _

_Last time was different,_ Peorth sent back. _And I do regret what I did. I did not see the man he truly was until it was too late. Knowing what I did to him, I would not have asked him out myself, but as it was he who made the first move, giving him a fair shot is the least I can do, non?_

_Very well,_ Belldandy replied. _But be honest with him. _That_ is the very least you can do._

_Oui, oui, oui, _Peorth returned. _I'll be on my way now. Have fun._ She got up to leave. Belldandy looked up and offered her a smile before the French goddess turned and left the theater.

888

Tamiya straightened his tie and gave himself a once-over in the mirror. He didn't have much in the way of "date clothes." The best he could do was a short-sleeve white shirt with pin stripes and a red tie along with his best pair of "arraignment" khakis. Still, it would have to do.

He turned to the roses and held his hands out as if to give them a good look. "So whatcha think?" he asked. "I could get some in this, right?"

The hulk went into the other room where he had left his bottle of Usher and spritzed himself heavily. "Yeah, Toraichi," he muttered to himself. "You are a tyrannosaur of love, a ninjitsu love warrior..." He flexed his muscles a few times as if warming up for a lift session before turning off the lights in that room and going back to give the roses their nightly watering.

"You girls be good," he said. "I'll be back later." He winked. "Maybe even tomorrow," he hinted slyly. He paused... "yeah, probably later," he amended.

He shut off the lights and walked out of the garage. The room seemed to hold its breath for a moment before a woman's outline began to coalesce from the air surrounding the potted plants. With a crack of displaced air, Caprice phased into the world, her eyes closed. She breathed in, savoring the feeling of the air on her face for just a moment.

"So... are you there?" Mercedes asked from nearby.

"Yes," Caprice said. "I believe it worked."

"Good!" Mercedes replied. "Time for stage 2!"

"Excuse me!" Lexus broke in, fanning herself frantically. "But am I the only one who saw Toraichi in that shirt and tie? I'm going to need a few moments here!"

"No time for that," Caprice said. She went to the Auto Club's only desk on which sat their computer and some scattered papers. She rooted through the papers until she found a member phone roster and picked up the rotary phone that sat nearby. "She lives with Morisato, right?"

"Yes," Mercedes confirmed.

Lexus was laying on the futon, breathing hard. "I mean... short sleeves and a tie... It's... it's just too much..."

Mercedes balled her hands into fists as Caprice dialed and whirled on her younger sister. "Lexus! Pull yourself together! Peorth must be stopped! Look at yourself! Do you know what will happen if Peorth meets him at that restaurant, and she sees him in that shirt and tie?!"

Lexus's eyes went wide. "Oh, dear God!" she gasped. "There's no way she _won't_ have sex with him! It's impossible to resist!"

"Exactly! Now give me a 'Peorth!'"

Lexus balled her hands into fists in front of her. "Peorth!" she hissed.

"LOUDER!"

"PEORTH!"

"Good!"

"For God's sake, shut up!" Caprice shouted at them, her hand over the phone's mouthpiece. She cleared her throat as someone picked up the phone on the other end.

"Hello?" a man asked.

Caprice licked her lips and dropped her voice as low as she could before booming into the phone. "MORISATO!"

"GAUGH! SENPAI?!"

"IS PEORTH STILL THERE?!" Caprice boomed in an voice about five octaves below her own.

"Yeah, she's in the other room putting her make-up on," Keiichi replied. "You wanna talk to her?"

"NO!" Caprice told him. "JUST TELL HER TO MEET ME AT THE AUTO CLUB! I WANT TO WALK WITH HER TO THE RESTAURANT... YOU KNOW... ALL ROMANTIC-LIKE..."

"Okay, Senpai, I'll tell her," Keiichi said.

"GOOD! GOOD BYE, MORISATO!"

"Good night, Senpai. Good luck!"

Caprice hung up the phone and giggled maniacally.

888

Peorth turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. She had tried knocking, but no luck. Assuming he hadn't heard her, she decided a little breaking-and-entering was warranted.

"Toraichi?" she called.

Nothing.

She had half-expected to see him waiting for her outside as she approached the clubhouse. Then, when that hadn't occurred, her mind amended her expectations upward. He was going to surprise her with a home-made dinner in the clubhouse or make some other cute attempt at winning her affections.

Peorth wasn't sure how she felt about Tamiya, that earlier business with using him muddied the water considerably. But she was willing to give it a whirl.

If, however, he was waiting in the other room half-naked with a rose in his teeth, this little experiment was officially over...

"Toraichi?" she called again as she approached the part of the club where the office and kitchen met. She saw the three roses sitting in the light of the kitchen's fluorescent bulbs, but no Tamiya.

She paused as she could swear she heard something... in the back of her mind.

_reee! reee! reee!_

The goddess blinked. The sound wasn't in the physical plane, it was in the astral one.

_Reee! Reee! Reee!_

She turned and came face-to-face with a crazed-looking red head with a shovel held over her head.

_REEEEE! REEEEE! REEEEE! REEEEE!_

Shovel met goddess, then goddess met floor, knocked out by the force of the blow.

Caprice turned angrily to Lexus, who was running a bow over a violin in short, quick strokes.

"You idiot!" she screamed. "You almost gave me away!"

Lexus stopped playing and stuck her tongue out at her sister. "Haven't you ever seen _Psycho_?" she asked. "A good murder needs a good soundtrack."

Caprice grabbed Peorth by the arms and started dragging her toward the futon. "She's not dead," she pointed out.

"Awwww," Lexus pouted.

Peorth's head lolled about as Caprice tied her hands behind her back and pushed her onto the futon. She sat next to the goddess and produced two leaves from Mercedes' and Lexus' plants. "Now, then, let's get to work."

888

Coming to was like breaking the surface of a lake and gasping for air. She moaned as her eyes tried to focus on three figures in her line of sight. "Mon dieu," she murmured weakly. What happened to her?

"This is marvelous, Caprice!" she heard a voice cry excitedly. "It feels so nice!"

"Hey, guys! I think she's waking up!" another voice announced.

Peorth focused on the shadowy figures as they approached and surrounded her. Finally, she could make out features. Three women, all with red hair, looked down at her. She blinked the remaining stars out of her eyes and realized for the first time that she was bound hand and foot.

"Who are you?!" she demanded angrily. "What do you want?!"

"Only what you've taken from us!" one of the redheads cried angrily. The taller one, put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Settle down, Lexus," she said. "We're in the physical plane now, and she is no longer able to interfere."

"Speaking of which," the third redhead, a woman in glasses, said. "We should be going if we're going to make it in time to mend poor Toraichi's broken heart."

"Lexus?" Peorth muttered. She looked at the other two. "Mercedes and Caprice Classic?" she asked incredulously. "You're Toraichi's _roses_?!"

"That's right!" Lexus replied. "_Toraichi's_ roses! And don't you forget it, Missy!"

Mercedes again pulled Lexus back. "Please understand," she said. "It's nothing personal..."

Lexus raised her hand. "Um... I think it's pretty personal..."

The other rose ignored her. "But Toraichi is our destiny, and you're interfering with that...and that's why we hit you with a shovel."

"And kicked you a few times while you were unconscious," Lexus admitted.

"The point is that Toraichi loves us," Mercedes broke in again. "And we love him. And those tender feelings can only unite our destinies if you don't interfere..."

"Because we ain't afraid to cut a bitch!" Lexus backed her sister up.

Mercedes closed her eyes and sighed. "Really, Lexus?" she asked. "A heartwarming appeal spoken from the depths of our love for Toraichi sama, and you follow it up with, 'we ain't afraid to cut a bitch?'"

"Well, we're not," Lexus argued. "Look what I found in one of the toolboxes!" she said, pulling out a pearl-handled switchblade that she opened with a blood-chilling _SNICK!_

Caprice took the knife away from her. "Please, just..."

Peorth blinked as something suddenly clicked. "Wait a minute... Toraichi didn't buy you at a local greenhouse," she said. "How did you get here?"

Before any of them could answer they all heard a _POOF!_ from the other room.

"HIDE!" Caprice hissed. She reached down and stuffed a sock in Peorth's mouth before dashing away.

As if to answer her earlier question, a familiar god strolled into the room, adjusting the cufflinks on his grey suit.

"Tamiya! Bro! Just came to see how things were working out with..." He saw Peorth and stopped short. "Woah... Hey, babe..."

Peorth struggled against her bonds and jerked her head in the direction the roses went.

"Look," Anteros began, "I appreciate the gesture, really, but you see I'm kind of trying a monogamous thing with Lind, and quite frankly she could bone me like a fish if she even got wind of this..."

Before he could go further, shovel met god, and god met floor.

Lexus stood over him, the snow shovel Caprice had used earlier in her hands.

"Oh... my... GOD!" she said. "That is so much FUN!"

888

Tamiya sat at the Seoul Cafe's bar and looked up at the clock for the twentieth time. She was late.

Really late.

I'm-blowing-you-off late.

He wondered if he should call her. Maybe there was an emergency, or her car broke down or...

_...or she's blowing me off._

His mind grabbed hold of this thought and refused to let it go. It's not like he could really even give her the benefit of the doubt. She'd used him before, and he'd forgiven her for that... Was it really so hard to imagine that someone who didn't give a canary's crap about his feelings before would disregard those feelings again?

It made him mad, actually. After everything that happened, you would think she would at least be on time. He had put a lot of effort into learning to be the kind of guy who does girly froo-froo stuff, who raises roses, who talks to women, and now...

He felt like a total idiot. Worse, he now knew what an idiot he was before when he was too ignorant to realize it.

As he seethed, the bartender put an appletini in front of him. "I din'nt order this," he said.

The bartender nodded to the far corner. "Comes from them."

Tamiya turned and found three gorgeous looking redheads smiling at him from a corner table. Was he looking in the right spot? Maybe he meant the other table, the one with the dude with the soul patch and...

No, he was going to assume it was the redheads. Standing up, he grabbed the drink and made his way over to the table. The women, all wearing green dresses, watched as he approached.

"Hey," he said. "Just wanna say thanks for the drink."

"You're welcome," Lexus said, pushing the empty chair on the other side of the table away with her foot.

He blinked. Were these women coming onto him? He cleared his throat. "Um... appletinis are my favorite," he said. "I don't drink them a whole lot because..."

"Wait, let me guess," the redhead in the glasses told him. "Because it undermines your man-cred?"

Tamiya smiled. "Yeah, I guess so. Okay if I sit down?"

"We were hoping you would," Mercedes answered.

He sat down and found all three women resting their chins in their hands, staring at him.

"So," he began. "Three redheads in Japan. I guess you girls are from outta town. Let me guess... you're Irish, right?"

"That's amazing," Mercedes said. "How did you guess that?"

"Put another shrimp on da barbie!" Lexus cried in what was definitely not an Irish accent. She jumped as Caprice stomped on her foot.

"I'm Toraichi Tamiya," he said.

"And what brings you out here tonight, Toraichi Tamiya?" Caprice asked. The way she said his name made him blush.

He cleared his throat again. "I'm s'posed to be meeting someone here."

"A date?" Mercedes asked.

"Yeah."

"And she's not here yet?" Lexus asked. "I think that's concrete proof that she never loved you to begin wi... OW!" She turned and gave Caprice the evil eye.

Tamiya didn't argue the point however. He shrugged. "Hey, win some, lose some, right?"

"Well, you know what they say," Mercedes began, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. "If you can't be with the one you love..."

"...love the ones you're with," Caprice finished for her.

_I'm start'n to think they're coming onto me,_ he thought.

Lexus stood up and circled around behind him. "You're a good guy, Toraichi Tamiya," she said. "I can tell even though _we've never ever met before_." She gave a wink to Caprice and Mercedes, who sighed in resignation. She put her hands on his shoulders and started to rub. "You just have to... Oh my god! You girls have to feel this! It's like bowling balls wrapped in silk!"

Caprice put her face in her hands, utterly mortified, but Tamiya smiled up at Lexus. "You like the guns, huh? You wanna see what they can do?"

Lexus stood there in his gaze and shivered. "Yes," she gasped. "Yes, I do..."

888

"Don't worry, babe," he muttered sleepily. "The first time is always scary. How about this? We can invite some of your friends to join us and then it won't seem so sc...OWWW!"

His interrupted line of thought came courtesy of Peorth, who was kicking him in the shins with her high heels. "Wake up!" she ordered.

"OWW! OWW!" Anteros cried. "Not love! Still not love!" He opened his eyes and found Peorth's angry brown orbs staring back at him. "Oh," he said. "Sorry, thought you were someone else." He turned his head and found he was, like her, bound with his hands behind his back and lying on the futon next to her.

"You are still the creepiest god I have ever met," she declared.

"What did I do?!" Anteros demanded. "I'm here helping a forlorn young man find his way to love. How was I supposed to know you were here or that we were being kidnapped?"

"Forlorn young... Toraichi?!" she cried. "Toraichi is your client?!"

"You mean the Incredible Sulk?" Anteros asked. "Yeah. He was having trouble in the interface department, if you catch my drift."

"Did you give him those roses?" she hissed.

"It's straight out of the manual for teaching young men to communicate with the fairer sex," he defended. "And look, see?" he asked, turning his head to catch a glimpse of the plants. "They're blossoming. Good job, Sulk! High five!"

He turned back and found Peorth's face full of absolute wrath. "You are an absolute idiot."

"If by 'idiot' you mean the genius that turned him into a guy who could land you, then yeah, I'm a huuuuge idiot."

She started kicking him again, not easy with her feet tied together, but somehow she made it work.

"Where did you get those roses?!" she demanded as he cried out in pain and tried to move away from her.

"Amazon-dot-God!" he replied. "Why?"

She sighed. "Because they're Elysian Roses, you nimrod! They are to regular plants what we are to mortals! They're the ones who knocked you out!"

"No wonder they were so expensive," he muttered. "That'll teach me to one-click without reading the reviews..."

"We have to get out of here," Peorth told him.

"Oh!" he cried. "My cell phone! It's in my pocket! Turn around and see if you can reach it." He rolled so that he was facing away from her and she did the same, maneuvering her hands to reach into his front pocket. "Okay... almost there..." he said. "Little deeper... Yep... that's good..."

"I'm not feeling it," she said.

"It's in my jacket pocket," he admitted.

She stopped dead and bit her lip in absolute fury. "All right," she hissed, moving her hands up to his jacket pocket. It only took a few seconds to find his blackberry. She maneuvered it as close to their heads as she could, and they both rolled over.

"Oh," she said, "By the way." She started kicking him again.

"OWW! Hostile! So hostile!"

"Call someone," she growled.

"Right!" he said. He cleared his throat and spoke into the phone. "Call 'Lind.'"

"I'm sorry," he phone replied. "Did you say, 'Call Rind?'"

"No, call 'Lind.' With an L. Seriously, it does that every time..."

"Calling 'Lind,'" the phone said.

888

Lind, decked out in a blue strapless dress that went down to her ankles, looked out the window next to their table and watched as the sun started dipping below the ocean outside the restaurant. He was late. She understood that strict adherence to punctuality was more a Valkyrie trait than a love god's, but given the effort she went through to make this occasion special, one would think he...

The thought was interrupted by her phone ringing. That was probably him now, telling her he would be there any second. She brought the phone to her ear.

"Yes?" she answered.

"Lind! It's me!"

"Obviously," she noted.

"Right! Look! I'm in Nekomi!"

"Which would be why you're not here where and when you said you'd meet me," she concluded.

"I have a really good excuse for that," he said. "I'm tied to a bed with Peorth and..."

She closed the phone and turned to the waiter. "I'm going to need a check please. And if you have one, I would like to borrow a deboning knife..."

888

"Hello? Hello? Lind? Baby? Honey? Sweetie?" He waited for an answer and received none. He looked up at Peorth with an expression of dread as the conversation and its endpoint went through his mind again.

"Well," he began carefully. "The good news is that she'll probably be here any second..."

Peorth glared at him.

"The bad news is she's probably going to murder me..."

"That's not bad news," Peorth corrected him.

He paused. "Right."

Peorth began to struggle in her bonds again. "We can't wait and hope that your latest conquest is going to come here and set me free before killing you," she said. "We have to get to Toraichi."

"Lind is not a conquest," Anteros corrected her. "She's the love of my life."

Peorth didn't stop working the ropes as she replied. "Says the man who just tricked me into giving him a handy. It makes no difference either way. The Almighty only knows what those roses are doing to him."

888

The roses squealed in delight as the table they were sitting on rose into the air again.

"FORTY-EIGHT!" they cried in unison. The table went down and then up again, causing them to squeal.

'FORTY-NINE!" they called. Lying on his back directly beneath them, Tamiya lowered the table and pushed it up again as if he were doing a bench press in the gym.

"FIFTY!" the roses cried triumphantly.

Tamiya gently lowered the table to the ground and crawled out from under it as the roses giggled at the feat.

"That's amazing, Tamiya chan!" Mercedes said.

He shrugged. "I like lift'n weights."

"Why?" Caprice asked him.

"I dunno," he said. "I guess I just like being strong. You know how some people complain 'bout be'n stuck between a rock and a hard place? Well, if I can lift the rock, then it's never a problem."

"That is super deep," Lexus commented dreamily.

"You know," he began, "I still don't know your names."

The roses looked to one another. Mercedes put her hand on her chest. "Well, Tamiya chan, I'm... Marcy. And this is... um.. Alexa... and this is... Priya."

"Those are pretty names," he said.

The roses fidgeted. Lexus leaned toward the other two and muttered conspiratorially. "He thinks our fake names are pretty!"

888

"Hey," Anteros said quietly.

"Shut up, I don't want you talking," Peorth replied quickly. The two had been content to lie quietly on the bed for about an hour, both trying to think of some way out of their predicament.

"Do you hear that?" the love god asked, ignoring her demand.

Peorth strained to listen. There, just on the edge of perception. "It sounds like... music... What is that? Some kind of Gregorian chant?"

"Like a chorus or something," Anteros judged.

The music got louder, coming from outside the garage.

"It's like a choral symphony," Peorth concluded.

Before Anteros could argue, the entire front half of the garage collapsed and was rent asunder, exposing the kitchen to the night air. Before them stood a dark knight in black and silver armor. The eyes of its horned helmet glowed with a black light mimicked by the dark lightning that ran up and down its body and the massive battle axe in its right hand. Choral music heralded its arrival as if it had descended on them upon a cloud of glory.

Anteros screamed like a frightened bitch as it marched toward them. Peorth squealed in terror and tried to inch her body away from it as it halted barely a foot from their futon.

The music stopped as it reached up and pressed a jewel on its neck. The metal of the helmet began to retract, bending and folding toward the back of the armored suit and revealing the goddess beneath it.

Lind looked down at them and arched an eyebrow. "Although I am no expert on fetish games," she began, "It occurs to me that one of you should be untied for this game to work."

Peorth sighed in relief. "Lind!"

"Obviously," the former Valkyrie concurred. "And the two of you do not appear to be having as much fun as I had suspected..."

"We were kidnapped," Peorth told her. "Get us out of here!"

A few quick slashes with her dagger, and the two gods were free. Peorth stood up, rubbing her wrists. "Merci," she said. "By the way," she added, "He tricked me into touching his genitals." With that, she walked past the Valkyrie.

Anteros cleared his throat. "Well..."

Lind grabbed him by the tie with a steel-gauntleted hand. "If she touched your genitals, then I get the same, yes?"

The love god smiled. "Baby, I wouldn't have it any other... OOOOOOUGH!"

The last part came as Lind punched him in the junk. Anteros collapsed on the concrete floor.

"We're good now," she announced before turning back to Peorth. "What happened here?"

"It seems that your boyfriend granted a friend of mine a wish," Peorth said. "And gave him three Elysian Roses which have seemingly fallen in love with him... in a very creepy way. They kidnapped me and used some of my blood to bring their astral essences into the physical plane, and now they're out there with him doing Almighty knows what."

"I see," Lind told her. She turned to Anteros. "Shall we go?"

"QUOI!?" Peorth cried. "Didn't you hear me?"

"I did," Lind said as she helped Anteros to his feet. "From what I gather, your friend wanted a romantic relationship."

"Oui..."

"And now he has one," Lind concluded. "Or do you believe these roses mean him some harm?"

Caught off guard by the question, Peorth paused. "Well... no, I don't believe so. They seem quite smitten with him. But... still... we can't just let them..."

"... give Tamiya the starring role in an awesome ginger porno?" Anteros finished, finally getting his wind back.

"Then your assessment of the situation matches mine?" Lind asked him.

Anteros snorted. "Yes. Boy wanted love, boy has love TIMES THREE!" He held up three fingers in emphasis. "You know how some gods give a hundred and ten percent? I just gave three hundred and thirty! What. Up."

"Good," Lind said. "I thought I may have misread the situation..."

Peorth was flabbergasted. "You can't be serious!" she cried. "Toraichi is... is..."

"Is?" Lind prompted.

The rose goddess let out a breath. "Special... to me," she finished.

Lind regarded her carefully for several moments, remembering a time more than 150 years ago when this same goddess offered her sound advice in her time of need. She took a breath.

"Very well," she said. "We shall... there's a term for it..."

"'Cock-block,'" Anteros provided helpfully.

"Quite," Lind agreed. "We shall help you cock-block your friend."

Peorth smiled. "Merci."

"So... um... how?" Anteros asked. "They could be anywhere by now?"

Lind plucked Anteros' blackberry from the futon. "Does he have a cell phone?"

"It's Japan," Peorth answered with a shrug. "Everyone has a cell phone. Except Keichi," she added. "I swear, it's like the boy still thinks it's 1988..."

"What are you going to do?" Peorth asked as Lind searched through Anteros' address book until she found a number with Nekomi's area code. "Warn him?"

"Do you think he would believe a warning?"

"Non."

"Then no," Lind answered, bringing the phone to her hear. "Do not concern yourself. Deception operations are an integral part of sound Valkyrie doctrine."

She paused until she heard someone pick up. "Hello," she began, speaking very softly into the phone. "Is this Mr. Tamiya? Oh, we may have a bad connection... try putting me on speaker..."

888

"Can you hear me now?"

"Yeah, I hear ya," Tamiya said. Standing nearby, the roses listened curiously. "Who's dis?"

"My name is Ritsuko Tekeshi," the caller declared. "I'm with the Government Board of Environmental Health."

"Ain't never heard of dem," Tamiya admitted.

"I'm not surprised," the caller said. "Mr. Tamiya, we frequently inspect school property, and during an inspection, we came across three rose plants in your club's garage. Are they yours?"

Tamiya smiled proudly. "Yep! Dems my girls!"

Nearby the Roses sighed longingly.

"They're very beautiful," the caller complimented.

"Thanks!"

"They're also covered in blight."

"What?!"

The roses all looked down at themselves. Lexus screamed in terror.

"I'm afraid so," the caller said. "It's a communicable infection that poses a risk to the other plants on campus, so I'm afraid they'll have to be confiscated and destroyed..."

"WHAT?!" Mercedes cried.

"But don't worry," the caller assured him. "We'll replace them with... younger... _prettier_ roses..."

Mercedes lunged at the phone in sub-psychotic rage, but the other two caught her.

"I have a shredder truck on the way," the caller said. "I just wanted to make sure you knew."

"Now, wait a sec!" Tamiya said. "You can't just chipper shred some guy's roses!"

"I'm the government," the caller said. "I can do whatever I want."

There was a click, and then dead air. Tamiya growled and put his hand through the table. "Can you believe dat?!" He turned to the redheads.

Only to find them gone.

888

Lind tossed the blackberry back to her boyfriend. "That should bring them here," she announced.

Peorth smiled at the deception. "Then what?" she asked.

Lind answered by picking up the discarded snow shovel and pushing it into Peorth's arms.

"Retaliatory strikes are also an integral part of sound Valkyrie doctrine."

888

"I didn't see a truck!" Lexus whispered as the three roses made their way through the garage. "Did any of you see a truck?"

"No, it must not be here yet," Mercedes concluded as she carefully moved around a suspended engine block.

"What if it was already here and left?!" Lexus gasped.

"Then we'd already be dead!" Caprice told her. "Let's just get our pots and get out of here!"

Stumbling through the dark, the three redheads found their way into the back office and sighed in relief when they saw their pots sitting where they left them. Caprice stepped ahead of the others and reached out.

A loud "CLANG!" rang out as a snow shovel hit the back of Lexus's head, dropping the rose to the floor. Mercedes cried out a second later as someone struck the back of her knee. Before she hit the ground, her arms were restrained behind her, and an unfamiliar weight pinned her to the concrete floor.

Caprice turned, ready to help her sister, but a familiar voice called out from where their plants stood. Turning back, she found Anteros sitting behind one of the rose plants with a pair of pruning shears in his hand.

"Uh uh," he cautioned, running the shears suggestively up and down the rose's stalk. "One wrong move... and the little bitch here gets it."

Caprice's eyes went wide, and Mercedes gasped. Lexus moaned painfully as Peorth stood over her triumphantly, one foot on the rose's back and the snow shovel clenched in her hand like a rifle in the hands of an African hunter who had just bagged a leopard.

The last rose composed herself and faced Anteros. "All right," she said. "What do you want?"

"Can I just say something?" Mercedes called out from beneath Lind. "I would really like to say something here!"

The others turned to her and waited.

The glamorous redhead turned her eyes toward Anteros. "I... am _not_ a bitch!"

Without a word, the rest of them turned back to the matter at hand. Caprice folded her arms over her chest and looked bored. "So?" she began again. "What do you want?"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to send the three of you back," Anteros told her. "Apparently," he continued, nodding his head in Peorth's direction, "...some people don't want hot redheads moving in on their territory."

"You're an ass," Peorth snapped at him.

"Oh, I don't think so," Caprice told him. "We love Toraichi, and we don't care how many branches you clip off of Mercedes. We'll never give up."

"Yeah!" Mercedes agreed. "Wait, what?!"

"I don't feel so good," Lexus called out groggily from the floor. "Who's winning? Are we winning?"

Caprice ignored them both. She turned to Peorth and engaged her directly. "Toraichi told us all about you," she said. "How you strung him along to get closer to that lesser man, Keiichi." Peorth's eyes went wide at this revelation. "And how despite that he still thought you were worthy of his love. Speaking from a strictly objective viewpoint, let me assure you. You are not."

"Wait a sec," Anteros interrupted. "You _used_ Sulk to get to another guy? No wonder he's so messed up."

"It does seem somewhat cold," Lind agreed.

"Now wait just a second!" Peorth cried defensively. "I had a mission, and yes, I used Toraichi to further a specific goal, but I didn't set out to hurt him! And you!" She turned her attention back to Caprice. "You used me to bring yourselves into the physical plane! How is that any different?!"

"Simple," Caprice answered. "One hurts Toraichi, and the other doesn't."

"Wow," Anteros remarked. "You flowers are really hung up on him, aren't you?"

"He is the light that makes us grow," Caprice told him, her eyes closed in almost religious rapture. "And now that we have blossomed, we shall, in turn, become that light for him."

"Word," Lexus agreed from the floor.

"And what, exactly, does that mean?" Lind asked her.

Caprice turned to her, still unsure of the Valkyrie's role in this episode. "Roses love the one who makes them blossom," she told her. "What we are now, we are because of him. To watch as he pined after one we knew wasn't worthy of him was very..." She paused, searching for the right word.

"Sucked balls!" Lexus threw in.

Caprice rolled her eyes. "Do you know what it's like to love someone and know you can't be with them?" she asked the Valkyrie.

"Yes," Lind told her matter-of-factly. Her eyes settled on Anteros for a bare moment. "I do."

Caprice turned back to Peorth. "If I thought for a moment that you were willing to give Tamiya sama the kind of love he wanted, the kind of life he wanted, it would be different. But I don't. Am I wrong?"

Peorth stared at her, wanting to say yes, for no other reason than to win this argument.

_Be honest_, Belldandy's words came back to her.

Did she love Tamiya? No, of course not! She barely knew him! And she was a good enough love goddess to know that whatever he felt for her was more infatuation than genuine love. It was possible, of course, that with time they would grow to love one another, but the odds of that happening were infinitesimal. She was a goddess. She would eventually leave to return to her duties. The best she could offer him was a short, passionate affair... something he might not even be able to handle.

But the Roses _did_ know him. They had listened quietly as he poured his heart out to them every night. He had spoken more to them than he ever had to her. She had used Tamiya to get to Keiichi, and they had used her to get to Tamiya. The difference was that love at least entered the equation on their part.

She opened her mouth to answer but was cut off by the sound of someone slamming the door open.

"GETCHER STINK'N PAWS OFF MY ROSES YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!" Tamiya roared.

The goliath came up short as he found, not government agents in his clubhouse, but his date, three redheads he had met that night, Morisato's exchange student friend, and the god who was teaching him to mack on chicks.

"Ah!" Mercedes cried from under Lind's knee. "Tamiya chan! We were just... um..."

"Playing Twister?" Lexus suggested. "Um... Right hand green!" She lifted her right hand and put it down on some random part of the floor.

"Hey, Bro," Anteros said in greeting. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."

"Anteros?" Tamiya asked in surprise. "What'z go'in on here?"

"I may have accidentally given you super-intelligent roses," Anteros told him. "Well... except for that one," he amended with a nod toward Lexus. "She seems a little dim."

"You ain't mak'n any sense, man," Tamiya told him.

Caprice took a breath and turned him. "He means, Tamiya sama, that _we_ are your roses."

Tamiya blinked at her. "Come again?"

"This love god was supposed to give you regular roses," Caprice told him. "But he inadvertently ordered what are known as Elysian roses, rose goddesses, if you will."

Tamiya wasn't sure how to process that. "So... like Anteros here? You're like him?"

"It's... very difficult to explain, "Caprice admitted, shifting her gaze. "But what it comes down to is that we... we're the ones you've been watering and talking to."

The hulk of a man looked down at her, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. The god and other goddesses in the room looked at them, wondering how the simple mortal would react to being told that he had been pouring his heart out to three beautiful women all this time.

Tamiya's eyes narrowed for a moment. "You're Caprice Classic, ain't ya?" he asked.

Her eyes went wide and finally found they way to his. "Yes," she gasped, amazed. "How did..."

The mortal shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Well... it's just that... I always noticed that... um... you were always a little shorter... and... I don't know... didn't show off as much, I guess."

Lind let Mercedes up, and Peorth took her foot off Lexus's back.

"You recognize us?" Mercedes asked in a shocked whisper.

"Well... now that I know who you are, yeah," Tamiya said with a shrug. "You're the tall one, and elegant... so I'm guessing you're Mercedes." He turned to Lexus. "And you're pretty but more wild, so you're Lexus."

"He knows us," Lexus whispered, tears in her eyes.

Tamiya turned beet red and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. "Well... yeah... I guess." He turned back to Caprice. "I mean it's not hard to believe, when ya think about it." He nodded to Anteros. "Anteros popped out of a bottle of cologne..."

"If you can call Usher a cologne, yes," Anteros agreed with an eyeroll.

"It's just weird," the college student continued. "I feel kinda stupid now... telling you all those things..."

Caprice shook her head quickly to forestall him. "Everything you said allowed us to learn about who you are," she said. "And knowing who you are, it let us..." Now confronted with him, Caprice's cool intellect failed her, and she trailed off.

Tamiya didn't push. He cleared his throat nervously.

Peorth watched the exchange, fascinated by it. There were obviously deeper and more complicated feelings here than she was aware of at first. But the more she saw, the more she knew whatever this complex relationship was, she stood outside of it. Although Tamiya might have thought he loved Peorth, she knew that the three roses he had cared for and nurtured already held a larger part of his heart that she did. She could not be a fourth.

She briefly wondered what Belldandy would do in this situation. The answer was obvious.

"There's a big problem, Toraichi," she suddenly spoke up. Every eye in the room went to her. "You see," she began, "Now that they're here, they can't go back. They have to stay here." The roses blinked in surprise at the statement.

Anteros smiled as he caught Peorth's drift. "Yeah," he added. "It's a god-rule-thing," he said. "They're stuck here."

"We just have to find someplace for them to stay," Peorth continued. "It won't be easy for them, though."

Tamiya blinked. "Well... Could they... I don't know...Maybe they can..."

"They should stay with you," Lind said, cutting through the double-speak. "You are their sponsor here. It makes sense for them to stay."

"We won't be any trouble!" Lexus declared, pushing her way up to Tamiya.

Mercedes stepped forward to stand next to her. "Yes, quite!" she said. "And I know I would feel much safer if we could stay with you," she added demurely.

"Stop it."

They all turned to the source of the outburst. Caprice was staring at the floor. "Just stop it," she told her sisters. "The only reason we should stay is if he wants us to stay. Not because he feels some kind of obligation to our safety or because we guilt him into it."

"You girls should stay," Tamiya said.

"Why?" Caprice asked him, tears in her eyes.

"Because..." Tamiya said. "You's my girls."

Peorth turned as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Lind cocked her head toward the door, and Peorth nodded, following the other gods out of the room, leaving Tamiya and the roses alone.

"Do you think they have a chance?" Peorth asked as they turned and started down the street.

"As much of a chance as a mortal who wishes for a goddess to always be by his side," Lind answered philosophically. "Don't you?"

"I just want him to be happy," Peorth told her. "I owe him that much. But what if it doesn't work out? Toraichi doesn't have much experience with normal relationships, how will living with three goddesses affect his life?"

"Four words," Anteros told her. "Bow-chicka-bow-wow."

Lind ignored him and instead addressed Peorth's question directly. "A very wise goddess once told me something when I faced a similar crisis," she said, stopping to face the other goddess. "Lighten up."

Peorth broke into a smile. "You think I'm taking love too seriously?"

"I have come to learn, Peorth, that love upsets natural orders," Lind told her. "A mortal and a goddess, a Valkyrie and a love god, a mortal and three roses... none of them make the slightest bit of sense... until you factor in love. And then it's as natural as anything else in Creation."

Lind started down the street again, leaving Peorth to ponder her words. Anteros put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll check up on them every once in awhile."

She nodded her thanks.

"Come on!" he cried. "Show a little optimism! What can happen?!"

Peorth smiled. "Wait for it."

888

Keiichi heard the knock on the door and diverted from his original destination in the kitchen to the front door. It was late, and he had been pulling an all-nighter in anticipation of a German test tomorrow. The rest of the house was dark, and the goddesses asleep.

He reached the door just as a second series of knocks landed on it. Opening it, he came up short and blinked at what he saw.

"Senpai?" he asked with an arched eyebrow.

Tamiya, flanked by three gorgeous redheads, stood on his doorstep with a box of his worldly possessions in his hands.

"Morisato," he said in greeting.

Remembering a time when not so long ago when he was wandering around town with a few possessions and Belldandy, Keiichi looked at the women hanging on him and put it together.

"Starting to regret that rule about no girls in the dorms, aren't ya?" he asked the upperclassman.

Tamiya's eyes shifted to the right. "Yes," he admitted.

Keiichi smiled. "You need a place to stay?"

"Yeah," Tamiya told him with a sigh of relief.

"Come on in," he replied, stepping back to make room for them to pass.

The three women preceded Tamiya inside, chattering as they went. Tamiya stopped next to Keiichi and let out a breath.

"It gets easier, right?" he asked.

Keiichi grinned. "No, not even close."

"I was afraid o'dat."

"So... who are they?" Keiichi asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Tamiya said.

"You'd be surprised."

With that, Keiichi shut the door and led Tamiya to the kitchen for a beer.


End file.
